Rep. Doris Matsui’s claim of securing $3 million for Sacramento was pure theater | Opinion

Last week, Sacramento Mayor Kevin McCarty and Councilman Phil Pluckebaum joined Rep. Doris Matsui to celebrate her efforts to secure $3.15 million in federal funds to place a four-acre cap over Interstate 5 to connect the riverfront to downtown. Based on the most preliminary of cost estimates, Matsui’s big announcement adds up to less than 1% of the money to build the project.

In January, local dignitaries gathered in downtown Sacramento to hail a $50 million donation by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg toward a campus near the Capitol for Sacramento State. That announcement was led by Sacramento State President Luke Wood, but the quest to convert three agency buildings into an academic center is so preliminary that no project budget exists to make it happen.

In Sacramento’s downtown, theater belongs on the stages of the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center. But it has been creeping into our local politics with these podium moments of grand announcements with little behind them.

It’s a sign of how creating a revitalized downtown Sacramento has many more questions than answers, despite the grandiose announcements of a college president trying to make his mark and a member of Congress trying to get re-elected.

It was a quarter-century ago when the late Robert Matsui represented Sacramento in Congress and pulled off a bit of a coup. On Dec. 2, 2001, The Bee detailed how Matsui had secured $3.5 million in federal funds for the very same idea, to build a deck atop the very same stretch of interstate, from Capitol Mall down to O Street adjacent to the Crocker Art Museum.

“I’m very appreciative and impressed with Matsui’s efforts,” said Sacramento’s mayor, Heather Fargo, at the time. “This is going to be very positive for the Crocker, for downtown neighborhoods, for Old Sacramento, for West Sacramento and for getting people safely and comfortably from the city to the riverfront.”

Two years later, the city spent the $3.5 million on a study of how to actually build the deck. But then year after year, nothing happened.

Doris Matsui’s recent press conference was simply a reminder of how little she has done to further this idea during her 20 years in Congress. As political theater goes, her “announcement” was a curious downtown stunt.

“I would love there to be a happy path where we can say that we’re going to be able to do this in three, five, seven years,” Pluckebaum told The Bee’s Graham Womack. “That’d be aggressive, probably. But odds are, it’s going to take a while.”

Pluckebaum was being kind.

Now the city has a major riverfront problem: Bids to replace the I Street Bridge are 50% over estimate, and no elected official, including Matsui, has a plan to find the additional $150 million. Notably, there has been no downtown press event featuring a similar cast of officials to highlight their struggles on this project.

As for Zuckerberg, he didn’t bother to come to Sacramento to announce the $50 million from his company, Meta. And that was perfectly reasonable.

The state has yet to set aside funds to help convert the three buildings into a new school of public affairs and a center to study artificial intelligence. Neither has the California State University system. It’s a really cool idea. The fact that a contribution by Meta was directed by the state to this project is akin to a down payment that awaits the real financing.

There is some exciting progress happening, particularly in the downtown Railyards, as a state-of-the-art Kaiser hospital and a professional soccer stadium are rising from long-dormant lands. But then there are also downtown dreams nowhere close to reality that are being presented to the public as if they were.

The only time to roll out the podium is when there is real money behind a shovel-ready project to break some ground. Otherwise, these announcements mostly serve to elevate the people making the announcements, something the public should always question.